âO Coffee, thou dost dispel all care, thou art the object of desire to the scholar. / This is the beverage of the friends of God; it gives health to those in its service who strive after wisdom.â1
âµ
Many have celebrated the majesty of the Danube as a field of virtuous battles, a witness to grandiose reigns, a parent of numerous dramatic landscapes that fostered artistic movements and styles, and a home to the architectural and urban magnificence of the Baroque and the Rococo. However, these grand narratives and gestures are more common to the upper and middle sections of the river and less evocative of its final reaches between the Iron Gate and the Black Sea. These lands speak in less resonant voices, and their sites are less revealing to the visitor.
Recalling his 1769 voyage along the Danube through the areas of Banat and Oltenia, the Austrian Johann Friedel writes that âthe entire land that stretches along the shore is not inhabited by people. You might think that you are headed towards a fantastic world where the wizard has chased everybody away. You can sail half a day without seeing a Romanian village. And they are only half an hour away from the banks, in the hidden valleys of the river.â2 A later account, by the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga at the beginning of the twentieth century, offers a less romantic view of the absence of man in this desolate landscape, in which, âlike an enduring memory of terrible old times, when blood was tainting the waters with iron sheen, the house is afraid to appear, as if the robber, the Danube pirate, would still be lurking to attack. Even with all the changes and transformations, an ancient state of eternal war still seems to be encumbering these waters that divide countries and nations.â3 Iorga recalls the tormented history of this uncanny place between empires, where the harbors were small and geared to military needs rather than to commercial opportunities. Conversely, accounts recall a more intense presence on the waters of the Danube further East, past the city of Vidin and especially around Silistra and BrÄila. This proximity is evoked by the Moldavian folklorist Elena Sevastos in a letter to her friend Electra Mortzun on August 28, 1887 from MÄcin, describing her voyage from BrÄila to Dobrudja, on the Danube âwith ships, boats, and all its finery. [â¦] As dwarfs we passed by the feet of the beautiful Marseille, the powerful Nelson and Lavrio [â¦] From our left, Middlebrough and Milano were looking at us with dignity; and on the bottom of the green Danube, between the moving and shimmering waves, sunken shipwrecks were becoming discernible.â4
Such tales of the river point to the uncovered world of remains embedded in the riverbed, which could provide unique evidence for trade and commercial relations, as well as for the day-to-day existence of the âsome 1,500,000 âGreeksââas the Balkan merchants were commonly known to contemporaries regardless of their ethnicitiesâ that Gábor Ãgoston estimates âwere involved in this profitable trade [between 1650 and 1850], exporting mainly Ottoman textiles, garments, and other âorientalâ goods from Ottoman territories to Habsburg lands.â5 Such evidence could complete the image and the imaginary of the early modern Danube not only as the line of containment between the Ottoman and Habsburg lands but also as the backbone of Europeâs waterways and waterborne trade routes, which met the Black Sea through the ports of Varna and ConstanÈa and carried ships traveling to or from Constantinople, and beyond the Aegean and the Adriatic, to Ancona or Ragusa.
The significance of âthe greatest river to flow into the Black Sea from Anatolia and Rumelia, after collecting the waters of seven hundred smaller rivers, and passing through two hundred and five citadels and citiesâ did not escape the attention of the mid-seventeenth-century Ottoman traveler Evliya Ãelebi, who paid particular attention to the rivers that flow into the lower Danube âfrom its leftâ: the Tisza, Sava, Drava, MureÈ, Bega, TimiÈ, SebeÈ, Olt, Palosuz, and Ormancea; the Prahova, IalomiÈa, BuzÄu, Rîmnic, and FocÈani; and the Putna, Siret, Bârlad, and Scînteia, among others.6 The valleys of these tributary rivers allowed the establishment of trade routes between the Carpathians and the Danube, at first locally, and which subsequently developed into regional roads linking Buda to the Black Sea through Transylvania and Wallachia.7 They also engendered the formation and growth of urban centers, at first in their upper reaches, toward the protective topography and forests of the Carpathians, and later advancing south, toward the Danube. Besides the geographical determination of these lands, the mountains and the river acted as core elements in shaping the popular conscience and identity of the Romanian Principalities, as illustrated by two maps produced at the turn of the eighteenth century, by Constantin Cantacuzino for Wallachia and Dimitrie Cantemir for Moldavia, respectively (Figs. 16.1 and 16.2).
Constantin Cantacuzino, map of Wallachia drawn between 1694â99, published in 1700 at Padua, in Anton Maria del Chiaro, Istoria delle moderne rivoluzioni della Valachia, Venice, 1718
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France
Dimitrie Cantemir, Tabula Geographica MoldauiaeâDescriptio antiqui et hodierni status Moldaviae, Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1771
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France
Modern interpretations of the layered history of Eastern and Southeastern Europe have added to the multifaceted imaginary of the Danube. Norbert Krebs has argued for its role as a âcultural borderâ between âCentral Europeâ and the âOrientâ as a prolongation of the Sava,8 while RÄzvan Theodorescu has written on the âcultural corridorsâ of Southeastern Europe formed by the rivers that flow into the Danube, ensuring the circulation of âcultural goods, ideas, innovations, troops, intellectuals, as many ferments and germs of civilization, linking Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, and the Romanian Principalities, but also the Dalmatian, or the Polish-Lithuanian worlds, in a sole, vivid and active, cultural organism.â9
Despite the growing scholarship on the subject, a great deal of information remains to be uncovered about the complexity of the diffuse translations and the constant negotiations between the various dominant religious, social, political, and economic worlds that blend into these borderland territories. In addition, there is still much to glean about the everyday life and person-to-person points of contact that extended along and across the vivid commercial corridor engendered by the Danube, which served as an important link between the Ottoman and the European economic systems throughout the early modern period.
To that end, this essay seeks to follow the trail of coffee, another fluid that played an important role in the emergence of early modern ideas and contours of urbanity around the Mediterranean, as well as around Europe. Specifically, I consider the temporalities and the extent to which the world of coffee penetrated, by way of the Danube, into the societies of Moldavia and Wallachia in the late seventeenth century, while seeking clues to new dimensions of the cultural exchanges between the East and the West in these peculiar borderlands (if not a rift) between the âOccidentalâ and the âOrientalâ cultural landscapes.
Coffee consumption and its preferred setting, the coffeehouse, flourished in seventeenth-century Europe as an alternative setting of sociability, a forum of free expression distinct from that of universities or the courts, a space of unrestricted interaction and lively conversation that fostered the ârise of the public manâ as discussed by Sennett,10 and a site for the formation of âthe public sphereâ as proposed by Habermas.11 Similarly, coffee and the coffeehouse had formed part of urban life in the East ever since the early sixteenth century, when the first kahvehâne were set up as places for religious and social meetings, and storytelling, as thoroughly presented by Evliya Ãelebi and recently documented by authors like Hattox,12 Kafadar,13 and Boyar and Fleet.14 In both worlds, this new type of voluntary sociability made possible by the coffeehouse acted as a significant agent of emancipation that helped pave the way for the new intellectual environments of the eighteenth century, which Dominique Poulot rightfully calls the age of âthe sociable city.â15 Albeit with different temporalities and physiognomies in the East and the West, the consumption of coffee was also an important part of what David Courtwright calls the âPsychoactive Revolution,â which he traces back to the sixteenth century with the spread of tea, chocolate, coffee, and tobacco, and the political and economic forces that have combined to âtransform the everyday consciousness of billions of people and, eventually, the environment itself.â16
The development of the public consumption of coffee supported the differentiation of the social structure, which Simmel described as the transition from a concentric model of âgroup affiliationââguided by the direct experience of the world and by military, economic, or political interestsâto a model based on common intellectual interests of people who come from very diverse social groups.17 It also sustained the rise of the bourgeoisie and its way of life by contributing to the reformation of manners and conduct, engendering new settings and forms of civility and civilian manifestation, and contributing to the refinement of urban lives and spaces. Despite the formal differences and nuances, the public consumption of coffee and its associated practices became a type of urban occurrence that is common to how the Ottoman and the Western European city dwellers shaped their social and spatial nets. Coffee, as a phenomenon, thus played with new temporalities and fostered new figures of urbanity.
The questions of when and how coffee arrived in certain territories and was adopted by different societies are manifold, providing a foundation for the growing international interest in the geographies of the travels and metamorphoses of coffee and the physiognomy of its settings and habits between the Middle East and Europe. The topic is yet more compelling in the context of the burgeoning historiographical tradition that seeks to trace the daily life and genealogies of the social, cultural, or political practices of modernity. In particular, following the trail of coffee into the Romanian Principalities opens up new avenues of inquiry into the slow rise of modern Wallachia and Moldavia in the midst of the feverish changes and exchanges at the turn of the eighteenth century. Historians concur over the meager urban tradition before this time: Murgescu and Bonciu, for instance, have demonstrated the peripheral condition of the urban economy of the principalities in relation both to the Ottoman and the Central European ones;18 while Pompiliu Eliade has written of the boyarsâ disregard for commerce and crafts, leaving âthe former to be dominated by foreigners, and the latter by slavesâ19âan attitude that is similar to the one among the Crimean aristocracy of the time.20 However, the âcultural renovationâ under the Phanariot regimes evoked by Kitromilides,21 or the new sensibility described by Lemny,22 find precedents in the advancements of the seventeenth century, and in the heterogeneous absorption of cultural models from the various sources surrounding these borderlands. What, then, is the chronology of coffeeâs arrival in the Romanian Principalities, and what does it tell us about the wider spectrum of their political, economic, and social relations to the dominant centers of power?
The purpose of this essay is thus to build a scaffold for this complex investigation to come, mainly by gathering and sorting through the earliest references to coffee by foreigners traveling through the principalities on their way between Western or Northern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. This focus was prompted by two reasons. First, the travelogues are among the most significant sources employed by Romanian historiography, as they supplement the scant tangible and documentary traces with information concerning diplomatic interactions, the state of travel, details concerning the state of the roads, and descriptions of towns and villages, customs, hospitality (ceremonies and banquets), people, and the economic conditions. Secondly, this approach highlights another dimension of the traveler, perceiving him not only as a carrier of ideas, fashions, or objects but also as a recorder of differences and a keen observer of the lands through which he journeys.
â¦
In April 1657, the envoy of the Swedish king Karl X Gustav to Sultan Mehmet IV and the Sublime Porte, Claes Brorson RÃ¥lamb, traveled across Transylvania and Wallachia in the company of his secretary Johan Ulrich Wallich and the young Conrad Jacob Hiltebrant. The mission was recorded by RÃ¥lamb in his private diary, which âentered rapidly the already well-established tradition of travelersâ accounts of the Ottoman world,â as well as by Hiltebrant, although in a âless detailed and captivating way.â23
According to RÃ¥lambâs diary, he and Hiltebrant left the mountain town of BraÈov on April 23, crossed over the Carpathians and into Wallachia, and reached the princely court of Constantin Èerban in TârgoviÈte on April 26. The scenery of his reception discloses the diversity of fashions borrowed from the neighbors: the LogofÄt addresses him in Latin while receiving him with an escort of 200 noblemen dressed in Polish style and riding on Turkoman horses. After the meeting with the prince, he writes that he received a kaftan with gold thread weft, which was a sign of the highest benevolence âby the Wallachian customs.â Indeed, offering this kind of garment at reception ceremonies was an Eastern court formality that was well incorporated into the Wallachian practice at that time. This ritual of hospitality was followed by a day-long banquet on April 27, which was even more memorable due to the many glasses of wine drank in honor of the sultan, the Swedish king, Rákóczi, Khmelnytsky, and the Moldavian prince, Gheorghe Ètefan.
Continuing his journey, RÃ¥lamb records that on April 28, âI came to the Danube, over against a town called Silistra Drestor or Silistra, where the said river separates Wallachia from Turkey. I crossed it in ferry boats, and so set my foot out of Christendom into Turkey.â24 Here, the pasha honored him with coffee, warning him to be cautious lest he burn himself. According to Sten Westerberg, âthis is the first time a Swede tastes coffee, or at least writes about it,â25 and finds its taste disgusting, comparing it to a âbrew of fried peas.â
This is a first indication that, if coffee did exist in Wallachia before 1657, it was not served publicly. The hypothesis is reinforced by RÃ¥lambâs notes about the numerous taverns he sees along his journey, which must not have served coffee: âOn the roads, one can travel for days without coming across a village. But every two miles, there is a small tavern, built of reeds and covered with straws (thatched roof), which serves wine and food.â26 The number of taverns also impressed Paul of Aleppo, who traveled there between 1654 and 1656 as he accompanied his father, Macarios III Zaim, patriarch of Antioch, on his journeys to Constantinople, Wallachia, Moldavia, Ukraine, and Russia:
âWe were much surprised at the multitude of the troops in Wallachia: they make tribes and tribes. At the same time, there are, in this country, thousands of houses for sale of wine and spirits, beer etc.; and all the military drink; but we never saw, on any of the four days, either intoxication among them, or wounds, or murder, or any wicked act; on the contrary, they were walking sober and upright, or sitting like persons in their full senses.â27
Paul of Aleppoâs descriptions of the habits and hospitality at the Moldavian and the Wallachian courts resemble RÃ¥lambâs account. The Ottoman traveler writes about crystal glasses, silver and porcelain cups that are used to serve wine, spirits (raki) and beer, recalling especially the significant role of wine during the day-long banquets, when at least one glass is poured for every honored person: the prince, his guest, the ruler whom the guest represents, the sultan, God, and so on, and at the end of the meal, each guest is offered the usual kaftan, of various qualities according to their rank.
The lack of any mention of coffee in these two very detailed accounts, and especially RÃ¥lambâs first encounter with this drink in Silistra, support the image of the Danube as a boundary that kept this germ of sociability away from the Romanian Principalities, at least until the West began to accept and embrace it in the 1650s. This assumption is supported by the patterns of coffee consumption in Hungary, recorded as early as the 1570s in Pécs but spread only in the territories found under Ottoman rule. Iván Szántó writes that âby the turn of the seventeenth century coffee in Hungary had assumed a widespread popularityâthere were coffee stalls in Buda, and possibly elsewhere in the occupied area, while outside the conquered parts they were still not seen.â28 We find similar confirmation of the public consumption of coffee across the Danube from the principalities in the accounts of Evliya Ãelebi, who traveled to these lands on various occasions between 1651 and 1666 along with the Ottoman troops sent to defend the borders or to fight against the anti-Ottoman rebellions in Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania.29
During his travels, Evliya records and surveys the various types of buildings in the cities he visits, offering an image of the public amenities and spaces that made up the urban life on the periphery of the Ottoman Empire. For instance, he writes about coffeehouses in Temesvár (TimiÈoara) and Olosig, as well as coffeehouses and boza houses in Oradea, although he does not seem to be particularly touched by their number or by the artistic or intellectual power that they emulate. These establishments mirror the regular occurrence of coffeehouses across the central regions of the Ottoman Empire; indeed, following the opening of the first coffeehouse in Istanbul in 1554â55, this habit spread quite rapidly, and the coffeehouse did make its way into these peripheral cities as part of the Ottoman customs and structures of the daily life that colonized even small and medium-sized towns of Anatolia, as well as of the Balkans, by the turn of the seventeenth century.30
In addition, Evliyaâs account of his 1651 journey to Bulgaria and Dobrudja supports the well-established view of the role of coffeehouses within the urban infrastructure all the way to the Danube, the border of the empire. For instance, he writes that the pasha of Silistra had paved the streets that lead to the river banks with stones and had built a large coffeehouse and many other shops as a waqf (endowment) for the maintenance of the roads. He counts seven coffeehouses in Mangalia, a place of trade inhabited by many merchants, mostly Lazs, Greeks, and Jews, and the main Muslim center in this region, and describes the Ismihan Sultan Mosque as surrounded by seven schools, three khans, about 300 shops, a small bazaar, and a small bath. According to Evliya, there are eight coffeehouses in Babadag, a city estimated at about 3,000 houses, with a great mosque surrounded by three madrasas, twenty primary schools, and eight khans, with three public baths, seventy private baths, a tannery, and 390 stalls dominated by Ragusan textile merchants. Karasu (Medgidia) has two coffeehouses and three boza houses for a total of about 1,000 households divided in three neighborhoods (mahalle in Ottoman Turkish, mahalale in Romanian), as well as a small mosque, a khan, a bath, seven schools, seven water cisterns, and fortyâfifty other shops. Asterabad (Ester) appears similarly vibrant, with 1,500 households and many churches, courtesy of the pasha, as well as numerous khans, coffeehouses, boza houses, and about 200 stalls.31 In the fortress of HârÈova, Evliya writes about a coffeehouse at the gate toward the Danube, which appears consistent with the Ottoman practice of colonizing the waters with various economic or leisure activities (Fig. 16.3).
Stadt und Festung HîrÈova: Bulgarien. Lithograph by A. von Saar, 1826 after a drawing by Erminy
National Library Of Serbia,
Besides, the âmini-glacial ageâ of the seventeenth century in Europe documented by Geoffrey Parker allowed various types of sociability to pour into the waters of the Danube throughout the year. In the âlandmark winterâ of 1657, when the ârivers froze so hard that people rode their horses on the ice across the Danube in Vienna, across the Main in Frankfurt and across the Rhine in Strasbourg, while barge traffic along the rivers and canals of the Netherlands were replaced by sledges.â32 Evliya witnessed the celebrations on the frozen Danube at Silistra, where people put up their tents and gathered to eat, drink, and do winter sports. In his account, he adds that the festival was already a custom, which became even more ample when it coincided with the Bayram, and the Bayram swings provided one of the great attractions of this festivity, inciting people to âpour onto the streets in a carnival of enjoyment.â33 Then, when spring arrived and the ice on the Danube began to break, an intendant from Istanbul rented fishing spots on the Danube (administered by the pasha of Silistra), and ordered the construction of a dalyan, in the age-old tradition from the Black Sea, Marmara Sea, and Aegean Sea dating from the pre-Byzantine era.34 Over 2,000 laborers and several hundred craftsmen, reaya, from Wallachia and Moldavia, brought pine, oak, and hornbeam pillars from the woods of GalaÈi, which they drove into the riverbed, starting on both sides of the Danube and working their way toward the middle, and then they welded a weir from vine branches. In the middle, they left a gate that only opened to allow the passing of ships (Fig. 16.4).
Map of the Dobrudja Plain, Istanbul, eighteenth century
BaÅbakanlik Osmanli ArÅivi Daire BaÅkanliÄi, HRT.0044, in Virgil Coman, Ahmet Yenikale (eds.), Dobrogea în izvoare cartografice otomane (sec. XVIâXIX). Bucharest: Editura EtnologicÄ, 2015. Scanned image edited by Serioja Bocsok
âBy this gate, the intendant orders the construction of several lodgings and a coffee room, with interiors and exteriors that are worth seeing. He lives here, in this serai, with his one or two hundred men. The intendant has his special room by this strait, besides the dalyan.â35
Evliya paints a similar picture a few years later at Chilia, once again amazed by the technique and the complexity of this temporary structure done and undone each year. Undoubtedly, such an experience was not something to be ignored by the hundreds of Romanians involved, and it provided an occasion for them to come into direct contact with coffee and the attendant customs. Evliyaâs story of the coffee room in the middle of the Danube thus confirms the widespread dissemination and non-elite consumption in the Ottoman Empire of this âdrug,â which, besides acting as a social catalyst in diverse settings, was thought to stimulate the mind and provide vigilance. Therefore, it is difficult to believe that the Romanians remained indifferent to any of these dimensions of coffee, beginning with the laborers of the dalyan and continuing with the merchants estimated by Evlyia to have made up a major part of Silistraâs population. However, having knowledge of coffee, and even the experience of it, does not automatically imply its (public) acceptance.
Throughout Evliyaâs accounts of his travels around Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, he gives no indication of coffee or coffeehouses, insisting rather on the cellars that sell wine, boza, various honey-based spirits, raki, Horelka, or Piva. In addition to the absence of any type of document that might attest to the presence of coffee or any of its associates prior to the 1660s, travelersâ accounts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries challenge the assumption expressed by the Romanian historian Constantin Giurescu36 that the first coffeehouses might have appeared as early as the sixteenth century in Bucharest, under the growing influence of Constantinople on the principalities. On the contrary, they corroborate Szántóâs observation of the âearly public consumption of coffee inside the Empire, and not outside its borders [â¦] [due to] the fact that coffee was still regarded as âIslamicâ at the time.â37 The religious association does seem to be the key factor in the matter, as coffee was being sold publicly in Crimea,38 also a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, like Moldavia and Wallachia, but it was Islamic, unlike the other two principalities.
Traces of this perception appear as late as 1681, in a story related by Giovanni Battista de Burgo among the fragments of his travels from Moscow to Constantinople through Moldavia in the company of a group of Dutch merchants who owned a warehouse in GalaÈi and had a correspondent in Chilia. The narrative concerns the exchange of gifts between the Dutch merchant leader and the agha in NeamÈ, in which the Dutch offered a kaftan lined with sable (samur) and the agha responded with wines and domestic animals and birds: âThen, the Calvinist Dutch gave order to separate the Turks and the Moldavians in two separate rooms and honored them according to their culture: the Turks were served coffee, sweet sherbets and a quarter of a Scud. And the Moldavians, as Christians, were served the strong wines that he had received from the Agha.â39
It is difficult to estimate the attitudes and the patterns of consumption of the lower classes, but there is ample evidence that the elites of the principalities had been building their identities as border defenders of Christendom ever since the Ottomans had reached the Danube in the late fourteenth century. To them, these religious associations would have been a strong reason not to accept coffeeâperceived as an âinfidelâ substanceâbefore the rest of the Christian world, even if they might have been familiar with, and had easy access, to it.
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However, once the religious association faded and coffee reached the courts and the public realm of England, France, Italy, Holland, Germany, and so on, its penetration into the Romanian Principalities followed rapidly and intensely, becoming an important part of elite consumption in Wallachia soon after 1659â60, when the capital was moved from TârgoviÈte to Bucharest by Gheorghe Ghica. Originally a merchant of Albanian descent coming from Greece, from the village of Köprülü, same as the grand vizier Köprülü Mehmet Pasha (1656â61), Ghica had made his way up the court of Vasile Lupu in Moldavia (1634â53) and then as a Kapikihaya in Constantinople. After Mihnea VodÄâs attacks on the Ottoman reaya of Giurgiu and BrÄila in 1658 and 1659, Ghica took the throne of Wallachia with the support of the Sublime Porte. This represented the end of the long vacillation of Wallachian rulers between the residences of TârgoviÈte and Bucharest, usually driven by pro-Ottoman or pro-Christian choices, as well as by economic concerns or by personal preferences.40
Despite the economic hardship that confronted the entire country in 1660, a period of peace began in Bucharest, enabling the city to sustain economic, social, cultural and urban development; as a result, the city became an important center in Southeast Europe. During his visit in 1664, Evliya counts 12,000 houses, about 1,000 stalls with cellars, seven khans, and several custom houses, and two years later, he notes that âcurrently, this city is growing by the day.â
Throughout the principalities, this was a time of advancement for crafts and commerce,âguilds were formalizedâand the acknowledgment of personal virtues as markers of nobility (blagorodie) supported the gradual refinement of manners and the diffusion of politeness and civility. The cultural accumulations from the previous decades began to blossom, and the local aristocracy, rooted in the agrarian tradition, became aware of the refinements of the city in comparison with the countryside; the earliest testimony in this respect appears in a letter sent by the Moldavian boyar Ion HÄbÄÈescul to Nicolae BuhuÈ around 1680, which laments their condition as ârustics.â41
Benefiting from this urban energy, coffee managed to find its place within new infrastructural systems, though there is no indication of the extent to which it contributed to the development of a meaningful foundation for the new cultural and intellectual relations between urbanites before the mid-eighteenth century. One effect that we are able to pinpoint, however, is the manner in which coffee changed the hospitality rituals at the courts of both Wallachia and Moldavia.
1 Coffee at the Courts of Wallachia and Moldavia
When the vicar-general of the archbishop of Sofia for Wallachia, Anton StepanÄiÄ, arrived in Bucharest to oversee the construction of a Catholic church during 1672 and 1677,42 he recorded the duties of the cupbearer of the court, an officer who supervises sugar candies, sugar sherbet, coffee, spirits, and all the sweets, while wine still held a privileged position under the care of the high cupbearer.43
From a later account by Luigi Fernando Marsigli, we learn about the different functions of wine and coffee during a diplomatic visit at the court of Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688â1714). In his report to Leopold I about his travels from Adrianople to Vienna through Wallachia and Transylvania in 1691, Marsigli writes that he was received with great honor at the princely court of Constantin Brâncoveanu, âin a beautiful roomâ where, behind closed doors, the prince assured him of his support for the emperor. This conversation was followed by the usual banquet, which included orthodox archbishops, as well as several court officers and boyars. They were served delicacies and expensive wines, all of which came from the country, and the music that announced each courseâwhich was deemed rather pleasant in its diversityâwas Christian, Turkish, and Persian. After the feast, the prince and Marsigli retired to another room, where they sat down on cushions laid on the floor, according to the Turkish custom, and talked for two hours over coffee and tobacco.44
Thus, in two decades, coffee managed to gain its rightful place in the cultural and social melting pot of Wallachia at the turn of the seventeenth century, which is described in detail by Anton Maria del Chiaro, âson of the late Signor Simon of Florence, instructor of Italian and Latin to the prince of Wallachia.â He was the secretary of Constantin Brâncoveanu from 1709 until the princeâs beheading in 1714, and subsequently continued his activity under Ètefan Cantacuzino (1714â16) and Nicolae Mavrocordat (1716) in the cultural landscape of the Orthodox cultural center of Bucharest at its turn to the Phanariot regime.45
Regarding the court banquets, del Chiaro writes that before the meal, guests were entertained by the host in his room, with spirits and water to wash their hands. After the meal, they returned to his room, where they again washed their hands and mouths with water brought in Turkish brass jugs from Saray in Bosnia. Coffee and tobacco pipes were brought for those who wished, and others might drink another glass of wine before coffee. A similar picture again appears during the Easter banquet at the court. Following the Sunday service, the prince and the patriarch went into the audience room, where they were joined by the other prelates, and they had coffee while waiting for the other seventy-eighty guests to arrive for the banquet.46 The generalized use of coffee at Constantin Brâncoveanuâs court is confirmed by a treasury inventory from July 7, 1696, which includes fifteen oca of coffee.47
According to del Chiaro, Brâncoveanuâs predecessor Èerban Cantacuzino (1678â88) used coffee, sherbet, scents, and perfumed water to receive the Turks (âcivilita consueta fra Turchiâ). There is no indication whether this hospitality ritual entered the court as a special treatment for the Ottomans, but if this was the case, then it was rapidly extended to all the guests, no matter their culture or religion. Meanwhile, the other elites of Bucharest began to employ it as a luxury good for special occasions, such as a gift brought to the godparentsâ house for the ceremonial first haircut of a recently baptized child.48
The rapid integration of these practices might find its origins in the more general preference for a life of leisure and refinement, as promoted by Brâncoveanu and the Cantacuzinos. They appropriated the best fashions from both West and East, in architecture and urban planning, as well as in luxuries, such as fabrics, embroidery, carpets, furniture, and various objects, in an open field of aesthetic exploration and experimentation.
One eloquent example in this respect is the unique and intriguing church, Fundenii Doamnei, founded by Mihail Cantacuzino in 1699, on the shore of the Fundeni Lake along the Colentina River, near the orchards where, according to Evliya, Muslims and non-Muslims met to revel together (Fig. 16.5).
Bathers in the Colentina River, watercolor by Amedeo Preziosi, June 21, 1869
Born from this spirit, the church is a combination of local tradition, Western Baroque, and Eastern ornament that samples the cultural and aesthetic advancements of the time, in full development of the Brâncoveanu architectural style. Mihail Cantacuzinoâs extensive visual culture was acquired during his studies in Constantinople and travels to Italy (Padua and Venice) and Asia Minor (to Jerusalem and Sinai). He shared Brâncoveanuâs appreciation for the art of stucco, employed particularly to enrich the interiors of palaces or the princeâs rooms in monasteries (like the Humor Monastery). Not far from the Fundenii Doamnei church, Evliya recorded a princely pavilion âmade entirely of gypsum,â a site for celebrations in the orchards on the Colentina River (Fig. 16.6). There is no visual trace of such a pavilion, or of any other constructions from that time, to give more context to the mesmerizing three-dimensional decoration of the church, filled with playful and uplifting recreations of the atmosphere of an Ottoman köÅk, with fruits, fish, flowers, and cypresses, composed around a coffee table (Figs. 16.7 and 16.8). Older accounts mention that it used to be painted with cinnabar red, cobalt blue, and golden green,49 colors that were commonly used in Turkish and Persian miniatures, ceramics, and other decorative arts at the time (Figs. 16.9 and 16.10).
G.M. Cantacuzino, the first modern architect to become interested in Fundenii Doamnei, in 1921, found that the atmosphere given by the ornaments recalled the Song of Solomon, which would suggest that it might have been erected for a princely wedding.50 Besides, an important celebration might have been the best pretext for transferring such lush ornamentation from the interior and the exterior, and from the secular to the ecclesiastical. The architect also observed the spontaneity with which the decoration might have been executed, thus supposing that the motifs must have been very familiar to the artists, who were able to translate them from miniatures or textiles into stucco and adapt or adjust them according to the Wallachian church façadeâs composition scheme. This does not automatically imply that the workers were Ottoman, given the amplitude of Brâncoveanuâs support for cultivating local craftsmen. If this is the case, then the decoration can also be interpreted as a visual codification of what represented the âgood lifeâ in the eyes of the Wallachian elites at the time, penetrating the secular and the clerical realms.
We do not know when coffee was absorbed by the clerics, but to this day, the hospitality ritual in a monastery in Wallachia and Moldavia includes Turkish coffee and sugar sherbet or confectionary jam.
â¦
Around the same time, we find an indication that coffee had also made its way to the Moldavian court. During his travels to Turkey, Syria, and Greece, Cornelio Magni allegedly traveled to Moldavia in July and August of 1672, relating the story of how Mehmet IV was invited by Prince Gheorghe Duca for coffee at the palace on June 12, 1672 during his campaign against Poland.51 There is no other record of this meeting, but the integration of coffee as a hospitality ritual at the court is plausible and additionally supported by Mehmetâs trust in Prince Duca, whom he appointed Hetman of Ukraine in 1681 to reestablish order and to repopulate the abandoned towns on the right side of the Dnieper.52
South-east view, Fundenii Doamnei church, Bucharest
Photograph by Serioja Bocsok, May 2021
In any case, the custom was well established by 1700, when Rafael Leszczynski arrived at IaÈi on his way back from the Sublime Porte for the ratification of the Carlowitz treaty. The envoy reached the Moldavian border on February 18, crossing the frozen Danube right before it began to melt. Ten days later, the mission was honored by the Moldavian prince Antioh Cantemir with a typical banquet, which lasted seven or eight hours. According to Leszczynskiâs relation, they drank wine for about three hours, raising each glass in the honor of someone: the king, Alexander the Great, and so on. Then Antioh subsequently requested some Polish music in order to please his younger brother Dimitrie Cantemir, as well as his guests. Before and after the banquet, Leszczynski and the prince retired to the back room, where they were served âcoffee, sherbet, spirits, and perfumed water for the hands,â and discussed the treaty and the mutual respect for the religions of the two countries.53
Stucco motifs, South facade, the köÅk, Fundenii Doamnei church, Bucharest
Photograph by Serioja Bocsok, May 2021
Stucco motifs, South facade, Fundenii Doamnei church, Bucharest. Measured detail drawing, 1944
Archive of the âIon Mincuâ University of Architecture and Urban Planning Bucharest. image edited by Serioja Bocsok
Carved motifs, CakalogÌlu Hanı ÃeÅmesi, Gaffarzade, Izmir
original photograph by Nicole Kançal-Ferrari, 2016; image edited by Serioja Bocsok
Motifs on exterior wall, Mosque in Berat, Albania
original photograph by Nicole Kançal-Ferrari, 2014; image edited by Serioja Bocsok
Traveling to Moldavia in 1708, Erasmus Heinrich Schneider von Weismantel also relates the rituals of the audience to Nicolae Mavrocordat, who sits on a high chair dressed like a prince and with his head covered with a sable fur cap (kuÄma) that follows the Eastern customs. Next to the chair is a Turkish bench, upon which the guests always sat to drink coffee or sherbet54âsimilar to how this Turkish custom was also practiced on the northern Black Sea coast.
The same patterns of hospitality are recorded in the palace of Constantin Duca in Constantinople, which served as a waiting place for the imperial mission to the Sublime Porte for the Carlowitz treaty, comprised of Count Oettingen, president of the Aulic Council, Count Leopold von Schlick, commander in chief on the Theiss, with Colonel Count Luigi Marsagli as border commissioner, and Till, a member of the council of war, as secretary and protocolist. The journal of the Benedictine abbot Simperto, chaplain of the count of Oettingen, relates how Duca welcomed the envoy in a large hall arranged in the Turkish fashion and invited him to sit on a velvet armchair, while the prince sat on a cushion according to Turkish customs. They stayed for one hour and were served coffee, rose water, and nargileh (Rauchwerk) until the emissary (çavuÈ) arrived to escort them to the sultan for the hearing on February 13. The scene was repeated on their return on February 16, at which time the delegation was escorted by the emissary to the palace of the Moldavian prince, where they were received with âbeautifulâ confectionary, expensive wines, sherbet, coffee, and âAmbre-Rauchâ and then honored with a seven-hour banquet.55
There are several other accounts reiterating this scene, which demonstrate the influence of Turkish customs on the rituals of the courts in Wallachia and Moldavia. Those practices resemble the ones described by the mission of Michael Teleki and Janos Papai at the pasha of Temesvár (TimiÈoara, in Banat) in 1709,56 as well as the ones described by Michael Eneman, pastor of the Lutheran church in Constantinople, guest of the pasha of Ismail in 1709.57 The changing manners at the courts follow the overall strengthening connections between the Romanian elites and the Sublime Porte, which were also reflected in the number of properties bought by various princes (Vasile Lupu, Gheorghe Duca, Èerban Cantacuzino, and Dimitrie Cantemir) and even boyars of lower ranks in Curu-CeÈme or Fanar. The same occurred along the road linking the Danube to Edirne and Istanbul, where these individuals took advantages of the facilities offered by the sultan, who viewed this act as a guarantee of the ownersâ loyalty.58
Besides its obvious presence at the court, coffee entered the collective imaginary as a symbol of the political connections between the principalities and the Sublime Porte. Among the forty-two legends and oral histories gathered by the Moldavian chronicler Ion Neculce between 1732 and 1743, one tells about the LogofÄt Ion TÄutu, who was sent to pay the tribute after the death of Ètefan cel Mare (Stephan the Great) in 1504, the emblem of the resistance against the Ottomans. After âsubmitting the country to the Turks,â the legend says TÄutu was offered coffee (âcahfèâ) and, not knowing how to sip it, he raised the cup to âthe Sultan and the Vizierâ and drank it âlike other drink.â59 Aurel Decei has already proven the anachronism of this tale, as TÄutu died in 1511, six years before Selim I first brought coffee to Constantinople as part of his booty from Egypt.60 In fact, the legend is more relevant for the time in which it was disseminatedâin the first half of the eighteenth centuryâduring which period the country was discontented with the new Phanariot regime and the growing dominance, both political and cultural, of the Ottoman Empire over the principalities. It also speaks to the deep incorporation of coffee into the popular customs at the time, in which capacity it was âoldâ enough to become part of oral histories and contentious enough to be a pretext for irony.
Just as coffee attained an image as the seal of political submission, so too did it become the mark of independence through another story about the 1860 visit to the Sublime Porte by Alexandru Ioan Cuza, the first ruler of the united Wallachia and Moldaviaâthe modern state of Romania. The suite included Dimitrie Bolintineanu, named minister of foreign affairs the following year, who writes that the Ottoman officers brought them coffee cups with barely any liquid in them and that the one he received was completely empty.61 Beyond Deceiâs interpretation of this gesture as a symbolic end to the Ottoman dominance over the now-united principalities, the story supports the common association between coffee and the cultural imports from the Ottomans, though in reality the principalities may not have accepted it before Western Europe. Interpreted in the broader context of relations to the Sublime Porte, these tales exemplify the ambivalent attitudes of the principalities toward the Ottomans, perceived equally as an oppressor and a source of modernization.
2 The Public Consumption of Coffee
The earliest proof of the existence of a public coffeehouse in Bucharestâas opposed to private uses at courtâdates back to 1667. The establishment, which belonged to a former seaman from Topcapi called Kara Hamie, was in the center of the city, on land owned by the Cotroceni Monastery.62 Upon Kara Hamieâs death in 1691, his properties went to the public treasury, and the coffeehouse was bought by Ivaz for sixty-five lei,63 who in turn gave it to the abbot of the monastery for thirty lei in 1693. It is difficult to estimate if there were any other coffeehouses at the time in Bucharest, or at which point they began to flourish.
Del Chiaro writes that: âIn Wallachia there arenât restaurants (osterie) like in other countries in Europe, and especially in Italy, instead wine can be bought from underground taverns (criccima) kept by loose women [â¦] in an atmosphere of promiscuity and questionable morality.â64 As in most European countries, this rejection of establishments that sell wine or beer is indicative of a changing morality that required new settings and new aestheticsâspatial as well as gestural. In that capacity, coffee managed to create new spaces of alternative conviviality, not only in the new coffeehouses themselves but also by contaminating existing structures of daily life, such as fairs or public baths. The initial vendors of coffee in the market, and the keepers of coffee rooms inside the public baths, were Jews, Turks, and Armenians, but they were later joined by Romanian coffeehouse keepers, like Oprea cafegiul (the coffee-maker), who is documented in December 1741 as having moved his coffeehouse to a more central and larger shop; Gheorghe cafegiul is recorded in February 1734, while Stanciu cafegiul is recorded in June 1746, and Ion cafegiul in June 1755.65 The business very likely grew under the Phanariot rule, which began in 1715, especially given the influx of men of letters from Greece, as well as Armenian, Jewish, Greek, and Turkish merchants, who sold coffee, sugar, spices, textiles, and Persian rugs, mainly originating in Constantinople.66
Nonetheless, evidence that coffeehouses became places of social or political disturbance prior to the mid- eighteenth century have yet to be identified. The reaction of the rulers is usually a strong indication of the power of coffeehouses to foster debate and the rise of public opinion, demonstrated by the repeated bans on coffeehouses, boza houses, and wine houses in the Ottoman Empire. There, the first such ban was passed a few years before 1600, and became a recurring act in the following centuries, as Cemal Kafadar describes: âCoffeehouses within that half-century between the chronogram and the letters of Koca Sinan Pasha turned into places where political matters were debated, negotiated, or subjected to myriad diversions and subversions [â¦] What is banned, in other words, is people congregating (outside the licit forms of congregating for religious ritual); coffeehouses are simply a superb venue for that dangerous habit.â67
On the contrary, the earliest known ban on coffeehouses in Wallachia dates from September 1, 1782, when Nicolae Caragea ordered the agha to take measures against those who spoke against the ruler, also to stop the rumors and political debates in coffeehouses.68 The following bans belonged to Nicolae Mavrogheni, in 1787 and again in 1789, with the very same purpose of ebbing the tide of gossip that originated in and spread among the coffeehouses. Indeed, the French merchant Hortolan, who settled in Bucharest with his partner Pellet and his employee Jeaume, records that coffeehouses were filled with Polish, Hungarians, and Greeks who came from nearly everywhere; they were deemed mostly revolutionaries, des sans-culottes, who participated in Romanian translation of the Human Rights Act.69
Besides the dominant presence of foreigners, the quick ascension of the coffeehouse in Bucharest toward the end of the eighteenth century was also supported by the lowering prices of coffee. The price of an oca dropped from the equivalent of eight and a half days of field labor in 1793 to five days of field labor in 1836, and then to less than three days of labor in 1858.70 Moreover, the earliest mention of the guild of coffee-makers only appears after 1788.71
It took a century for the administration of Wallachia to worry about these venues of sociability, and this only occurred around the time of the French Revolution, when the entire international scene was already fermenting. Additionally, ConstanÈa GhiÈulescu remarks that the edicts given by Caragea are very similar to those passed by the sultans,72 which corroborates the assumption that the bans enforced by the Romanian rulers might have been prompted, or at the very least inspired, by the recurring edicts in the Ottoman Empire.
Hence, the chronology of the public consumption of coffee seems to confirm theories about the delayed and feeble development of the public sphere in the principalities, while also demonstrating that there were precedents that catalyzed the overall leap toward modernization: reticently before the 1700s, insidiously in the eighteenth century, and more determined after the 1830s.
One hypothesis at the origin of this essay was that the official arrival of coffee in the principalities occurred only after the West accepted it. Indeed, the first European coffeehouse opened in Oxford in 1650, and we have seen that, in all likelihood, coffee was still not sold publicly in 1657 in the principalities, but a coffeehouse was already recorded ten years later in Bucharest. If nothing more, the arrival of coffee in the principalities was part of the overall refinement of spaces, objects, arts, and the body, with aesthetics that verify the conceptualized image of this region as âa sort of halfway house between the âOccidentâ and the âOrientââ:73
âCome and enjoy the company of coffee in the places of its habitation; for the Divine Goodness envelops those who partake of its feast.
There the elegance of the rugs, the sweetness of life, the society of the guests, all give a picture of the abode of the blest.â74
The narrative of its rapid integration into the diplomatic and private life of the elites confirms the fluidity of cultural exchanges that were occurring among these marginal territories, where borders vigorously display their dual nature as political and military dividers as well as cultural, economic, and social connecters. Their king, the Danube, was not only a symbolic anchor in the Romanian leadersâ self-representation as âdefenders of Christendomâ but also a lenient margin between Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire, traversed apace by the enjoyment of coffee.
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Notes
âIn Praise of Coffee,â c.1511, collection of verses in Abd- al-Kâdirâs manuscript [1587], Bibliothéque Nationale de France, Paris, âArabe, 4590,â in William Harrison Ukers, All About Coffee (New York: Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, 1922).
Johann Friedel, Gesammelte Kleine gedruckte und ungedruckte Schriften. Den Freunden der Wahrheit gewidmet (1784), trans. Eugen PÄunel, in Foreign Travellers about the Romanian Countries (Bucharest: Ed. Academiei Române, 2000), 10: 1: 32.
Nicolae Iorga, Peisagii (Cluj: Dacia, 1972), 95â96.
Elena Didia Odorica Sevastos, CÄlÄtorii prin Èara RomâneascÄ [Travels through Wallachia] (IaÈi: Tipografia NaÈionalÄ, 1888), 21st letter, 133.
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Evliya Ãelebi, Seyahatname (Istanbul, 1896â1938), trans. Mustafa Ali Mehmet, CÄlÄtori strÄini despre ÈÄrile Române, vol. 6 (Bucharest: Editura ÈtiinÈificÄ Èi EnciclopedicÄ, 1976).
LaurenÈiu RÄdvan, At Europeâs Borders: Medieval Towns in the Romanian Principalities, trans. Valentin Cîrdei (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2010).
Norbert Krebs, âDie geographische Struktur der südslawischen Länder,â Geographische Zeitschrift 47 (1941): 242â56.
RÄzvan Theodorescu, Roumains et Balkaniques dans la civilization sud-est europeÌenne (Bucharest: Editura EnciclopedicaÌ, 1999), 13â48.
Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York, NY: Knopf, 1977).
Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Ãffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. (Frankfurt am Mein: Suhrkamp, 1962).
Ralph Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1985).
Cemal Kafadar, âHow Dark is the History of the Night, How Black the Story of Coffee, How Bitter the Tale of Love: The Changing Measure of Leisure and Pleasure in Early Modern Istanbul,â in Medieval and Early Modern Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean (Brepols Publishers, 2014).
Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, A Social History of Ottoman Istanbul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 205â6.
Dominique Poulot, Les Lumières (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000).
David T. Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
G. Simmel, âThe Web of Group-Affliations,â in Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations, trans. Reinhard Bendix (New York, NY: Free Press, 1955), 137.
Bogdan Murgescu and Florin Bonciu, âConsideraÅ£ii asupra abordÄrii mondiale a proceselor istoricoeconomice,â Anuarul Institutului de Istorie «A.D. Xenopol»âIaÅi 30 (1993): 541.
Pompiliu Eliade, De lâinfluence française sur lâesprit public en Roumanie, Les Origines (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1898).
Verbal communication from Nicole Kançal-Ferrari.
Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution: The Making of Modern Greece. (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2013), 54.
Ètefan Lemny, Sensibilitate Èi istorie în secolul XVIII românesc (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1990).
Karin à dahl, âClaes Bronson Ralambâs Embassy to the Sublime Porte in 1657â1658,â in The Sultanâs Procession: The Swedish Embassy to Sultan Mehmed IV in 1657â1658 and the RÃ¥lamb Paintings, ed. Karin à dahl (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2007), 8â25.
Claes RÃ¥lamb, Diarium under resa till Konstantinopel 1657â1658, in Historiska handlingar, ed. Christian Callmer (Stockholm, 1963), 37:3.
Sten Westerberg, âClaes Ralamb: Statesman, Scholar and Ambassador,â in The Sultanâs Procession: The Swedish Embassy to Sultan Mehmed IV in 1657â1658 and the RÃ¥lamb Paintings, ed. Karin à dahl (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2007), 26â57.
Claes RÃ¥lamb, Diarium under resa till Konstantinopel 1657â1658, translated in Maria Holban, ed., CÄlÄtori strÄini despre ÈÄrile române [Foreign travellers about the Romanian Principalities], vol. 5 (Bucharest: Editura ÈtiinÈificÄ, 1973), 612.
Paul of Aleppo, Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch (1653), trans. Francis C. Belfour (London: Oriental Translation, 1836), 121.
Iván Szántó, Safavid Art and Hungary: The Esterházy Appliqué in Context (Piliscsaba: The Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, 2010), 82.
Evliya Ãelebi, Seyahatname.
Cristina FeneÈan, Cultura otomanÄ a vilialetului TimiÈoara (1552â1726) (TimiÈoara: Editura de Vest, 2004), 134; Suraiya Faroqhi, âCoffee and Spices: Official Ottoman Reactions to Egyptian Trade in the Later Sixteenth Century,â Festschrift für Andreas Tietzke. Sonderheft Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (Vienna, 1986), 76:87â93; Towns and Townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Evliya Ãelebi, Seyahatname.
Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 6.
Boyar and Fleet, A Social History, 205â6.
Ståle Knudsen, Fishers and Scientists in Modern Turkey: The Management of Natural Resources, Knowledge and Identity on the Eastern Black Sea Coast, Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology Series (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009).
Evliya Ãelebi, Seyahatname, translated in Mustafa Ali Mehmet, CÄlÄtori strÄini despre ÈÄrile Române, vol. 6 (Bucharest: Editura ÈtiinÈificÄ Èi EnciclopedicÄ, 1976): 373.
Constantin Giurescu, Istoria BucureÈtilor din cele mai vechi timpuri pânÄ Ã®n zilele noastre (Bucharest: Editura pentru literaturÄ, 1967), 326.
Szántó, Safavid Art, 82.
Evliya mentions coffee shops in Caffa, Bahçesaray, and other towns on the peninsula.
Giovanni Battista de Burgo, Viaggio di cinque anni in Asia, Africa, & Europa di D. Gio. Battista de Burgo abbate Clarense, e vicario apostolico nel regno sempre cattolico dâIrlanda (Milano: nelle Stampe dellâAgnelli, 1689).
RÄdvan, At Europeâs Borders, 171.
Violeta Barbu, De bono coniugali. O istorie a familiei din Èara RomâneascÄ Ã®n secolul al XVII-lea (Bucharest: Meridiane, 2003); Nicolae Iorga, Scrisori de boieri, scrisori de domni (VÄlenii de Munte: Datina româneascÄ: 1925), lxi.
Maria Holban, ed., CÄlÄtori strÄini despre ÈÄrile române [Foreign travelers about the Romanian Principalities], vol. 7 (Bucharest: Editura ÈtiinÈificÄ Èi EnciclopedicÄ, 1980), 441.
Johann Christian von Engel, Geschichte der Moldau und Walachei (Halle, 1804), 109â17.
Emilio Lavarini, Autobiografia di L.F. Marsigli (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1930).
Giuseppe Motta, Viaggiando nelle Terre Romene. Italiani ed europei nei principati (secc. XVIâXIX) (Viterbo: Sette Citta, 2004).
Anton Maria del Chiaro, Istoria delle modern revoluzioni della Valacchia (Venice, 1718), chapters 2 and 8.
Constantin Giurescu, Istoria BucureÈtilor din cele mai vechi timpuri pânÄ Ã®n zilele noastre (Bucharest: Editura pentru LiteraturÄ, 1966), 326.
Del Chiaro, Istoria delle modern revoluzioni, 77, 138.
Corina Popa and Dumitru NÄstase, Biserica Fundenii Doamnei (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1969).
G.M. Cantacuzino, âFundenii Doamnei,â in Boabe de grâu (March 3, 1931), 151â54.
Cornelio Magni, Quanto di piuÌ curioso, e vago haÌ potuto raccorre Cornelio Magni nel primo biennio da esso consumato in viaggi, e dimore per la Turchia (Parma: Galeazzo Rosati, Alberto Pazzoni, e Paolo Monti, 1679â92).
Daniel Flaut, âThe Romanian Countries in European Political Context. From the Truce of Bakhchisarai (1681) to the Siege of Vienna (1683),â Revista RomânÄ de Studii Eurasiatice 5, nos. 1â2 (2009): 41â56.
Legatia illustrissimi Raphaelis LeszczyÅski, 1700, manuscript 523 of the Czartoryski Library in Cracow; cited in P.P. Panaitescu, trans., CÄlÄtori poloni în ÈÄrile Române (Bucharest: Cultura NaÈionalÄ, 1930): 79â119.
Samuel Ebbe Bring, E.H. Weismantells dagbok, 1709â1714 [historischer Extract auss meinem gehaltenen Compagnie Journal], Historiska handlingar 28, 1 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1928), 70.
Simpertus von Neresheim, Diarium, oder ausfuÌhrliche curiose ReiÃ-Beschreibung von Wien nach Constantinopel und von dar wieder zuruÌck in Teutschland, des Herrn Wolfgang, Grafens zu Oettingen ⦠(Augsburg, 1701; Oettingen: Lohsens, 1735); translated in Holban, CÄlÄtori strÄini [Foreign travelers], vol. 8: 147â156.
Gróf Teleki Mihály és Pápai János Nándorfehérvári követségi naplója, ed. Thaly Kálmán (Budapest: Monumenta Hungariae Historica, Scriptores, vol. 27, 1875); translated in Holban, CÄlÄtori strÄini [Foreign travelers], 8: 252â255.
Carl Uno Nylander, Resa i Orienten 1711â1712 by Michael Eneman (Upsala: Schultz, 1889), trans. Constantin Karadja, in Revue historique du Sud-Est européen 6, nos. 10â12 (octobreâdécembre 1929): 365â372.
I. Panait, âProprietÄÈi ale Cantacuzinilor români la Istanbul,â paper presented at the Romanian-American Colloquium Cotrocenii în istorie, Bucharest, July 15â17, 1993.
Ion Neculce, O samÄ de cuvinte (1743), x.
Aurel Decei, âLogofÄtul TÄutu nu a bÄut cafea,â Magazin istoric 6, no. 63 (June 1972): 58; see also Mihai Maxim, âIstanbul în epoca lui Soliman Magnificul,â Magazin istoric 9, no. 126 (September 1977): 46.
Dimitrie Bolintineanu, âCÄlÄtoria Domnitorului Romînilor la Constantinopol,â in ProzÄ I (IaÈi: Editura LibrÄriei Ècoalelor FraÈii Èaraga, 1895): 192.
Gheorghe Ionnescu-Gion, Istoria Bucurescilor (Bucharest: Stabilimentul Grafic I.V. Socecu, 1899), 690.
George Potra, Documente privitoare la istoria oraÈului BucureÈti 1634â1800 (Bucharest: Editura Academiei RSR, 1982).
Del Chiaro, Istoria delle modern revoluzioni, 39â42.
Potra, Documente privitoare la istoria oraÈului BucureÈti 1594â1821.
Del Chiaro, Istoria delle modern revoluzioni, 110.
Kafadar, âHow Dark,â 252â54.
Gheorghe Parusi, Cronologia BucureÈtilor (Bucharest: Compania, 2007).
Documente Privitoare la Istoria RomânilorâcolecÈia Hurmuzaki, supl. I, vol. 3 (Bucuresci, 1893): 95â101.
Irina Stahl, âLe café au croisement des deux mondes. Exemple dâune acculturation volontaire dans la ville de Bucarest au XIXème siècle,â Ethnologia Balkanica 15 (2011): 63â92.
Ionnescu-Gion, Istoria Bucurescilor, 132.
ConstanÈa VintilÄ-GhiÈulescu, PatimÄ Èi desfÄtare. Despre lucrurile mÄrunte ale vieÈii cotidiene în societatea româneascÄ 1750â1860 (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2015), 304.
Alan Dingsdale, Mapping Modernities: Geographies of Central and Eastern Europe, 1920â2000 (London: Routledge, 2002), 26.
âCoffee Companionship,â c.1511, collection of verses in Abd-al-Kâdirâs manuscript [1587], Bibliothéque Nationale de France, Paris, âArabe, 4590,â in Ukers, All About Coffee, 544.